MLA-C01 Practice Question: ML Solution Monitoring, Maintenance, and Security
A company uses SageMaker Model Monitor for data quality. They notice that monitoring jobs are failing intermittently with constraint violations. Upon review, they see that some features have different data types in production compared to the baseline (e.g., string instead of integer). Which type of drift is this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse schema drift with statistical drift, thinking any change in feature values qualifies as statistical drift, but the key differentiator is that schema drift specifically involves changes in data type or structure, not just distributional shifts.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Schema drift
Schema drift occurs when the structure or data types of features in production data differ from the baseline used during model training. In this scenario, a feature that was an integer in the baseline is now a string in production, which is a classic example of schema drift. SageMaker Model Monitor detects this by comparing the inferred schema of production data against the baseline schema, flagging any type mismatches as constraint violations.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Schema drift
Why this is correct
Schema drift involves changes in the schema, such as data type mismatches, new or missing columns.
- ✗
Concept drift
Why it's wrong here
Concept drift is a change in the relationship between features and the target variable, not in the input data structure.
- ✗
Statistical drift
Why it's wrong here
Statistical drift involves changes in the distribution (e.g., mean, variance) of feature values, not their data types.
- ✗
Bias drift
Why it's wrong here
Bias drift refers to changes in fairness metrics, not data types.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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